Leonora took her seat much with the air of a judge about to deliver a sentence. She did not restrain herself even in consideration of the presence of Lewis the butler, who, to be sure, had been long enough in the Wentworth family to know as much about its concerns as the members of the house themselves, or perhaps a little more. Miss Leonora sat down grim and formidable in her bonnet, which was in the style of a remote period, and did not soften the severity of her personal appearance. She pointed her nephew to a seat beside her, but she did not relax her features, nor condescend to any ordinary preliminaries of conversation. For that day even she took Lewis's business out of his astonished hands, and herself divided the chicken with a swift and steady knife and anatomical precision; and it was while occupied in this congenial business that she broke forth upon Frank in a manner so unexpected as almost to take away his breath.

"I suppose this is what fools call poetical justice," said Miss Leonora, "which is just of a piece with everything else that is poetical-weak folly and nonsense that no sensible man would have any thing to say to. How a young man like you, who know how to conduct yourself in some things, and have, I don't deny, many good qualities, can give in to come to an ending like a trashy novel, is more than I can understand. You are fit to be put in a book of the Goodchild series, Frank, as an illustration of the reward of virtue," said the strong-minded woman, with a little snort of scorn; "and, of course, you are going to marry and live happy ever after, like a fairy tale."

"It is possible I may be guilty of that additional enormity," said the Curate," which, at all events, will not be your doing, my dear aunt, if I might suggest a consolation. You cannot help such things happening, but, at least, it should be a comfort to feel you have done nothing to bring them about."

To which Miss Leonora answered by another hard breath of mingled disdain and resentment. "Whatever I have brought about, I have tried to do what I thought my duty," she said. "It has always seemed to me a very poor sort of virtue that expects a reward for doing what it ought to do. I don't say you haven't behaved very well in this business, but you've done nothing extraordinary; and why I should have rushed out of my way to reward you for it-Oh, yes, I know you did not expect anything," said Miss Leonora; "you have told me as much on various occasions, Frank. You have, of course, always been perfectly independent, and scorned to flatter your old aunts by any deference to their convictions; and, to be sure, it is nothing to you any little pang they may feel at having to dispose otherwise of a living that has always been in the family. You are of the latest fashion of Anglicanism, and we are only a parcel of old women. It was not to be expected that our antiquated ideas could be worth as much to you as a parcel of flowers and trumpery

These were actually tears which glittered in Miss Leonora's eyes of fiery hazel grey-tears of very diminutive size, totally unlike the big dewdrops which rained from Miss Dora's placid orbs and made them red, but did her no harmbut still a real moisture, forced out of a fountain which lay very deep down and inaccessible to ordinary efforts. They made her eyes look rather fiercer than otherwise for the moment; but they all but impeded Miss Leonora's speech, and struck with the wildest consternation the entire party at the table, including even Lewis, who stood transfixed in the act of drawing a bottle of soda-water, and, letting the cork escape him in his amazement, brought affairs to an unlooked-for climax by hitting Miss Wentworth, who had been looking on with interest without taking any part in the proceedings. When the fright caused by this unintentional shot

had subsided, Miss Leonora was found to have entirely recovered herself; but not so the Perpetual Curate, who had changed colour wonderfully, and no longer met his accuser with reciprocal disdain.

"My dear aunt," said Frank Wentworth, "I wish you would not go back to that. I suppose we parsons are apt sometimes to exaggerate trifles into importance, as my father says. But, however, as things have turned out, I could not have left Carlingford," the Curate added, in a tone of conciliation; "and now, when good fortune has come to me unsought

Miss Leonora finished her portion of chicken in one energetic gulp, and got up from the table. "Poetic justice!" she said, with a furious sneer. "I don't believe in that kind of rubbish. As long as you were getting on quietly with your work I felt disposed to be rather proud of you, Frank. But I don't approve of a man ending off neatly like a novel in this sort of ridiculWhen you succeed to the Rectory I suppose you will begin fighting, like the other man, with the new curate, for working in your parish?"

ous way.

When I succeed to the Rectory," said Mr Wentworth, getting up in his turn from the table, "I give you my word, aunt Leonora, no man shall work in my parish unless I set him to do it. Now I must be off to my work. I don't suppose Carlingford Rectory will be the end of me," the Perpetual Curate added, as he went away, with a smile which his aunts could not interpret. As for Miss Leonora, she tied her bonnet-strings very tight, and went off to the afternoon service at Salem Chapel by way of expressing her sentiments more forcibly. "I daresay he's bold enough to take a bishopric," she said to herself; "but fortunately we've got that in our own hands as long as Lord Shaftesbury lives;" and Miss Leonora smiled grimly over the prerogatives of her party. But though she went to Salem Chapel that afternoon, and

consoled herself that she could secure the bench of bishops from any audacious invasion of Frank Wentworth's hopes, it is true, notwithstanding, that Miss Leonora sent her maid next morning to London with certain obsolete ornaments, of which, though the fashion was hideous, the jewels were precious; and Lucy Wodehouse had never seen anything so brilliant as the appearance they presented when they returned shortly after reposing upon beds of white satin in cases of velvet-“ Ridiculous things," as Miss Leonora informed her, "for a parson's wife."

It was some time after this-for, not to speak of ecclesiastical matters, a removal, even when the furniture is left behind and there are only books, and rare ferns, and old china, to convey from one house to another, is a matter which involves delays-when Mr Wentworth went to the railway station with Mrs Morgan to see her off finally, her husband having gone to London with the intention of joining her in the new house. Naturally, it was not without serious thoughts that the Rector's wife left the place in which she had made her first beginning of active life, not so successfully as she had hoped. She could not help recalling, as she went along the familiar road, the hopes so vivid as to be almost certainties with which she had come into Carlingford. The long waiting was then over, and the much-expected era had arrived, and existence had seemed to be opening in all its fulness and strength before the two who had looked forward to it so long. It was not much more than six months ago; but Mrs Morgan had made a great many discoveries in the mean time. She had found out the wonderful difference between anticipation and reality; and that life, even to a happy woman married after long patience to the man of her choice, was not the smooth road it looked, but a rough path enough cut into dangerous ruts, through which generations of men and women followed each

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other without ever being able to mend the way. She was not so sure as she used to be of a great many important matters which it is a wonderful consolation to be certain of-but, notwithstanding, had to go on as if she had no doubts, though the clouds of a defeat, in which, certainly, no honour, though a good deal of the prestige of inexperience had been lost, were still looming behind. She gave a little sigh as she shook Mr Wentworth's hand at parting. "A great many things have happened in six months," she said "one never could have anticipated so many changes in what looks so short a period of one's life"-and as the train which she had watched so often rushed past that bit of new wall on which the Virginian creeper was beginning to grow luxuriantly, which screened the railway from the Rectory windows, there were tears in Mrs Morgan's eyes. Only six months, and so much had happened!-what might not happen in all those months, in all those years of life which scarcely looked so hopeful as of old? She preferred turning her back upon Carlingford, though it was the least comfortable side of the carriage, and put down her veil to shield her eyes from the dust, or perhaps from the inspection of her fellow-travellers: and once more the familiar thought returned to her of what a different woman she would have been had she come to her first experiences of life with the courage and confidence of twenty or even of fiveand-twenty, which was the age Mrs Morgan dwelt upon most kindly. And then she thought with a thrill of vivid kindness and a touch of tender envy of Lucy Wodehouse, who would now have no possible occasion to wait those ten years.

As for Mr Wentworth, he who was a priest, and knew more about Carlingford than any other man in the place, could not help thinking, as he turned back, of people there,

to whom these six months had produced alterations far more terrible than any that had befallen the Rector's wife :-people from whom the light of life had died out, and to whom all the world was changed. He knew of men who had been cheerful enough when Mr Morgan came to Carlingford, who now did not care what became of them; and of women who would be glad to lay down their heads and hide them from the mocking light of day. He knew it, and it touched his heart with the tenderest pity of life, the compassion of happiness; and he knew too that the path upon' which he was about to set out led through the same glooms, and was no ideal career. But perhaps because Mr Wentworth was young-perhaps because he was possessed by that delicate sprite more dainty than any Ariel who puts rosy girdles round the world while his time of triumph lasts, it is certain that the new Rector of Carlingford turned back into Grange Lane without the least shadow upon his mind or timidity in his thoughts. He was now in his own domains, an independent monarch, as little inclined to divide his power as any autocrat; and Mr Wentworth came into his kingdom without any doubts of his success in it, or capability for its government. He had first a little journey to make to bring back Lucy from that temporary and reluctant separation from the district which propriety had made needful; but, in the mean time, Mr Wentworth trode with firm foot the streets of his parish, secure that no parson nor priest should tithe or toll in his dominions, and a great deal more sure than even Mr Morgan had been, that henceforth no unauthorised evangelisation should take place in any portion of his territory. This sentiment, perhaps, was the principal difference perceptible by the community in general between the new Rector of Carlingford and the late Perpetual Curate of St Roque's.

THERE is a question I wish some one would resolve for me, for though I have an opinion upon it myself, I am by no means sure it is a correct one; and indeed the matter has so many aspects, it is not easy to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion.

The question is this: Are men generally greater or less than their works? That is to say, is the speech, or the lecture, or the poem, or the picture, better than or inferior to the man that made it? It is a somewhat large field for speculation, and probably would demand from us a greater insight into the natures and characters of distinguished men than is easily attainable. It is, moreover, one of those questions on which any great sweeping judgment would in all likelihood be incorrect.

There have been men of such versatile genius-so many-sided, as the Germans say-that it would be difficult to say they were not greater than their works; not alone because their great intellects could adapt themselves to labours various and dissimilar, but because it would not be easy to pronounce in what especial pursuit the individual had found his truest field and his most congenial work. Michel Angelo was one of these.

My own opinion is this, the man is always, or almost always, inferior to the thing he produces; and in this instance, as in countless others, the part is better than the whole. I am, of course, here speaking solely of representative menthe great signs of the human equation. As for Jones and Brown & Co., I reserve them for another occasion.

The varying ratio of the differ

ence between the man and his work will be measured by the character and peculiarity of the work itself.

Thus a man's greatest battle, his grandest speech in the House, his epic, or his essay, may possibly be only in a slight degree above the normal stature of the man himself; whereas, if he be a painter, his great picture is sure to overtop him considerably; and if a musician, his grand opera will reduce him to the mere proportions of a dwarf; and this, remember, not because music is a higher development of the intellectual faculty than war, statecraft, or poetry; but because of all created bipeds there is nothing so mentally small as a composer!

Mendelssohn alone of all our present-day men had genius : as for the others, there is not one of them whose worst ballad is not better than he who wrote it. They are the shallowest thinkers, the worst-informed on matters of general interest, and the poorest conversationalists the world produces. They are as circumscribed as the actor, and they have not that humoristic tendency which gives to the actor all the emphasis of his character.

Next in order to musicians come hairdressers great, indeed, as artists, poor as humanities. It would not be fair, perhaps, to expect a man to rise to the level of the wig; for what assumption of virtue or magnanimity could vie in counterfeit with that wavelike fall over the ears, that curl of more than childlike innocence on the forehead? I can imagine Mr Truefit a charming companion, brilliant, suggestive, and versatile; but it would be hard to persuade me that he was greater

than "her ladyship's front;" or that, like his prototype, the red man, he was not grander in his "scalps" than in himself.

To come back, however, from special instances to my original proposition; for if I walk farther in this track, I might grow personal. I opine, then, the work will be found almost universally greater than the

man.

In other words, that the individual in any great creation has, through the excitement of his labour, so worked upon his faculties that they have accomplished results far beyond their normal exercise, and in this way transcended the individual himself. Hence was it Petrarch shed tears as he read over his sonnets-tears, certainly, not shed for Laura; and Cervantes laughed till he cried over the drolleries of Sancho Panza. And if Shakespear withstood Falstaff, he was something more or less than human. I have heard, and I like to believe it, that Dugald Dalgetty was intensely relished by Scott years after he had written him.

Over and over again in the Lives of Painters do we find them in amazement at some of their own earlier efforts; and Fuseli cried out on seeing one of his own without recognising it, "What a genius that fellow had!"

These are the traits, too, which Brown & Co. fix on to establish their pet accusation of vanity against clever men; and indeed I would wish at this moment to protest against being classed with these critics, since it is not by disparaging the man that I seek to establish my position, but by elevating the work. Now what is the true state of the case? It is no use beating about the bush, taking a bygone example, or indicating a live one by asterisks. Let me instance myself; I can afford to say it without any risk of being called vain. I have seen a great deal of life, not alone in the great world and the little world, but in that intermediate world which is bigger than them

both. I am variously accomplished, and remarkably gifted. Don't be disgusted, sagacious reader; I must say these things-they are part of my brief; and if I do not put them forward, you certainly will not do so for me; but if I am anything "great," it is as a conversationalist. Competent judges from all parts of the world have declared that, though I may have an equal somewhere in Japan, perhaps, or Bokhara, I have no superior.

Not a monologist like Macaulay, nor an overbearing opinionist like Croker, nor a flippant epigrammatist like Thiers, my skill was pre-eminently employed in eliciting whatever latent stores of agreeability I could detect around me. Not merely a talker myself, I made talkers of others. No rock so dull that I could not elicit a spark from it; no table-land so barren that I could not find a wild-flower in its desolation. Well, it so chanced that t'other day one of those creatures who presume on the fact of being an old schoolfellow to maintain an acquaintanceship, dormant for half a lifetime as if there could be any bond of friendship cemented by having been flogged by the same cane-came through the neighbourhood where I have pitched my tent for the summer, and installed himself as my guest for a day. He was a loutish, heavy-headed dog as a boy, and years had not made any better of him. He was as wearisome at forty as I remember him at fourteen, with this addition, that he had gathered as he went on in life a quantity of commonplace observation which he fancied to be wisdom, and a stock of the very dreariest stories that he thought wit. I had to endure this wretched incubus for twelve mortal hours, and to endeavour to, what is called entertain him. I did my utmost; I took him through politics, and gave him a canter from Circassia to SchleswigHolstein, with diversions into Poland and North America. I tried him with Colenso and the Dean of Westminster, dashed with Dr Dar